(BYP ceres:wterses management raz02 Riddhi Singh YEBY Flow Duration Curves Instructions 1. Form groups of 4or less to solve the problem. 2. Within each group, discuss the concepts outlined and solve the problems highlighted with black italic text or fill in the blanks. \Write the roll numbers of the group members in the space below: Member 1: Member 3: Member 2: Member 4: Goal This exercise helps you to learn about flow duration curves. The monthly discharge data for a river is given in Table 1. Plot the flow duration curve (FDC) from this data Month Discharge (m?/s) ee Jon [Sin Table 1. Monthly discharge data for river Definition (Vogel and Fennessey, 1995") [A streamflow duration curve illustrates the percentage of time a given streamflow was equalled or exceeded during a specified period of time. Ina FOC, discharge (Q) is plotted against exceedance probability (p). A FOC represents the relationship between the magnitude and frequency of daily, weekly, monthly streamflow (or some other time interval) fora particular river basin. Ifaverage daily streamflows for the complete period-of-record are used and if the data are stationary, then the resulting FDC represents the steady-state or long-term exceedance probability for a station. These are typically called ‘period-of- 1 Vogel, RLM. and Fennessey, N.M., 1995. Flow duration curves I: A review of applications in water resources planning 1, JAWRA Joumal of the American Water Resources Association, 31(6), pp. 1029-1038, 12 Scanned with CamScannerGAS Flow Duration Curves Fall 2024 Riddhi Singh record’ FDCs. Due to human interventions, ‘steady-state’ FDC is just @ concept. Therefore, other definitions of FDCs are prevalent in literature as discussed in Vogel and Fennessey (1995). Process for plotting FDCs: 1. Arrange the observed flow rates in order of descending magnitudes. So if you have N flow values, order 1 is assigned to the largest flow and N to the smallest flow. Let's call the rank of a observed flow value, m. 2, Estimate the percentage of time for each flow magnitude to be equaled or exceeded. The formula for this is: 3, Plot the percentage of time of exceedance vs. the flow magnitude to obtain the flow-duration relationship. Other useful excerpts from Vogel and Fennessey (1995): WATER RESOURCE INDEX DURATION CURVES A water resource index duration curve is defined as the relationship which deseribes the exceedance prob- ability of any appropriate water resource index such as hydropower energy output, river sediment load, turbidity, habitat suitability, river stage, ete. Figure 1 illustrates the construction of a water-resource index duration curve. A rating curve, deseribing the rela- tionship between streamflow and the water resource index, is combined with an FDC to produce the water- resource index duration curve. This analysis makes sense for any water resource index which ean be uniquely related to streamflow. The accuracy of the resulting water resource index duration curve depends upon the accuracy of the FDC and the rating ‘curve. Such rating curves can be both misleading and incorrect because many water resource indices are not related to streamflow alone, but rather are complex ‘multivariate functions of other variables in addition to streamflow. For example, many river cross-sections do not exhibit unique stage-discharge relationships due to varied hydraulic controls which are exerted either upstream or downstream of the location of interest. Similar limitations exist for all rating curves, RATING-CURVE FLOW-DURATION Water Resource Index 9 Exceedance Probability 1 P{Q>q} WATER RESOURCE DURATION CURVE Water Resource Index “Brceedance Probability Figure 1. Illustration of the development of a water resource index duration curve. Scanned with CamScanner